The appointment late last year of long-time ExecuJet executive Ettore Poggi to run the company’s entire worldwide FBO chain was a signal that it wants to raise its game in both standards and scale. “The idea is to keep adding [FBOs] and my job, as well as standards, is to grow both organically and by acquisition. There are a few opportunities we’re looking at, they come and go, and every day there’s another one wanting to sell up,” he told AIN before EBACE 2017.
It is the first time that all the FBOs in ExecuJet’s portfolio, which now number 25, have reported to one person, as previously they reported to their regional heads. Poggi has long been based in Africa, running the flagship African FBO at Lanseria Airport near Johannesburg, while he has been instrumental in setting up satellite FBOs in Cape Town and Lagos, Nigeria. With his new role, he is based in Dubai, UAE.
ExecuJet (Booth T70) was acquired two years ago by Luxaviation–just before the 2015 edition of EBACE. So it has become a different company and has clearly been on the acquisition trail. “People think that if the big guns are on the acquisition trail maybe I should sell. Also we manage around 300 aircraft around the world and lots of clients are very influential and have ideas [in their home markets], so we’re exploring some of those.”
Another theme for ExecuJet is the “one-stop-shop” idea where aircraft owners can rely on one outfit to manage and maintain their aircraft and provide FBO services at the airports they visit. “We set out many years ago to do the one-stop-shop, and I’m glad to see that’s bearing fruit,” said Poggi. “You may ask why we haven’t got many FBOs yet. One area that’s exciting for us is that we haven’t touched the U.S. yet, and South America is also on the horizon. But some of our most successful are in [less mainstream places], Lagos for example–it’s very successful.”
However, he added that “Asia has the best potential at the moment, for example, with Bangkok opening up. In Asia they are starting to understand [what business aviation can offer].”
Poggi said EBACE is a good event with lots of high-level people, a different event compared to NBAA’s annual & Schedulers Dispatchers conference in the U.S., which Execujet also participates in. “This is my first EBACE as group FBO director, and I have a busy schedule, working to establish us as a global network.” But he stressed that a big part of his job at present is establishing uniformity of standards and quality across the network, and being able to establish the same standards quickly when FBOs are added. “There is an integration job to be done,” he said, which involves everything from staff training to computer systems. He gave the example of the integration of the Abelag FBO, which is now “almost done.” Luxaviation acquired Abelag, which was a founding member of EBAA, in 2013 along with its fleet and FBO at Brussels Airport–now rebranded as Luxaviation Brussels.
Poggi also said a similar integration, and rebranding, is being done at ExecuJet’s FBO in St Maarten in the Caribbean. But integration is much more than that. “It’s also how we price, how we treat our clients…so there’s a lot of training, but we can draw resources form Switzerland, from the Middle East, etcetera,” said Poggi.
In Europe he admitted “there is not really development going on at the moment. If we were going to expand there, it would probably be in the East. But if opportunities arise with a good local market we will look at them. Some airports are very busy though, and there can be a number of FBOs already so there could be competition.” He said that the company has “half a dozen [possible new FBOs] on the table at the moment.” Its latest foray has been into India, for the first time, via a partnership in New Delhi, “and we also have managed aircraft in Singapore and an MRO in KL [Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia], and a small handling facility. But our main FBO in the region is in Bali.”
Returning to the one-stop-shop theme, Poggi said that the FBO chain is now “a profit center in its own right” while MRO and charter/management are the two other main profit centers for the company. Mike Berry heads up the latter from the Middle East (as president aviation services), while Graeme Duckworth heads up MRO for the Luxaviation Group (as executive v-p MRO services). All three report to group president Gerrit Basson.
However, there are crossovers. “For example we prefer aircraft under our management to use our FBOs, but we can’t dictate [what FBOs clients use],” Poggi explained. On the other hand he admitted that “FBOs and MROs don’t always go well together” because the other role of the MRO is to represent manufacturers, which can cause conflicts. “But we do prefer [on balance] to have both if we can.”
